Zap!

This is breakfast by candelight. Yesterday was the third brutally hot day and for the second night in the row the electricity blew. We woke up to no clocks, no computers, no phone, no light (hence this breakfast photo) no air conditioning, and no way to get Jonathan's car out of the garage.

The quiet was nice. The heat was oppressive. But the boys loved the breakfast. And it was a reminder that the world itself provides drama and excitement. We are so insulated from the natural world at this point it barely penetrates our consciousness in anything but the most extreme circumstances. But it is unforgettable. Fun. An adventure. And it teaches you respect for the world, for nature, and for its power. We are not invincible. We cannot control everything.

Das Walkyries

The best.

By night two the crowd was buzzing. Everywhere you stopped for a minute you could hear Wagnerian professors and musicologists comparing courses they teach and the best Ring cycle they have ever seen. A huge diagram of the Gods and the mortals and the half Gods and the Dwarfs sat on a stage on the second floor. Neophytes like us studied it between Acts. We were there for 5 hours.

I thought this: Wagner demands something of his audience that makes the whole experience more intense. He demands commitment, time, passion. Those of us there for the cycle have committed 18 hours of opera in 8 days. Crazy. It demands endurance, patience, and you are completely immersed in his music, his poetry, his myth. He takes over your mind.

It is hard to explain. But there is something about his deep dark chords that gets you on a level so deep it is hard to put into words. Wagner had special Bayreuth tubas made just to create his unique deep, dark sound. You can hear the characters in the music. You can hear the characters who are dark, the characters who are light, the characters who are evil, and the characters who are fighting, loving, and doomed. It makes you wonder: What would my leitmotif be?

But like an energy worker Wagner does get inside you. I believe he is shifting me in my darkest places. I cannot say it is completely pleasurable. But it is powerful, intense, and a once-in-a-lifetime experience.

Jonathan is already preparing for our second Ring cycle.

He texted me yesterday: "San Francisco, Summer 2011?"

Will we become like the crazy British gentleman? Jetting around the world to see the Ring?

Who knows? It is a transformative experience.

And the transformation is not yet complete. Back to Seigfried on Thursday, and Gotterdamerung on Sunday.

Jonathan's Favorite L.A. Day

Surf in the morning. Burritos for lunch. Opera in the evening.

Just Another Day In L.A...

We were driving to the beach yesterday, to meet some friends, when we hit a roadblock. La Brea had been shut down completely, and beyond the cones and flashing police lights we could see ambulances, fire engines and hooks and ladders, with their ladders stretched to the sky. At first we thought it was a street carnival, because we could see a giant bouncer, the biggest bouncer we had ever seen.

Then we realized, no, that is not a bouncer, that is to catch people leaping from a burning building. We joined the cars on the detour, looping through a tree-lined L.A. neighborhood full of pretty duplexes. There were crowds, and a carnival atmosphere. People with cameras, people walking their dogs, everyone heading toward La Brea. But there was no smoke. We turned a corner and caught another glimpse of the action--the flashing fire-trucks, the ambulances, and the giant, inflatable jumper. It must be a movie, we thought. This is L.A. where movie events always get confused for real ones.

We looked up, and there, poised on a giant, white neon cross on top of a building with a church beneath, was a naked man, holding part of the cross to balance himself, and looking out over the city. In front of him were a half dozen firemen in full gear, hanging off the ladder, talking to him, reaching out to him, gesturing to him. Oh, we realized. He's a jumper.

We craned our necks, looking at his naked buttocks, white in the early morning sunlight, and then we drove on to our day of the beach. Later, I heard he had still been up there on the cross naked at 1. The road was still closed at 3:30 when we came back from the beach. I don't know how he came down.

Pinata Alley

One of my favorite things about Los Angeles is that you could parachute down into some random block of this endless desert expanse and feel like you are in a different country. One of those blocks is at Central and Olympic downtown--ground zero for the world's most fantastic pinatas, north of the border. For an hour you can feel like you are in Mexico. There are thousands of pinatas in a half dozen stores. There are tiny domestic pinatas, fit for a small apartment, and HUGE five foot high pinatas to hang from towering oaks in park. They are disney characters, beer bottles, stars, giraffes, lions and burros. If you go in the morning, truck after truck rolls up and starts unloading MORE pinatas. From where? I don't know. But they pour out of pick up trucks and little delivery trucks, handed into owners and lifted up to hang outside, or inside on the rafters, where you can look up for 40 feet into a sea of pink, orange, blue and yellow streamers and pinatas.

Even if you don't have a birthday party, a quincineara, a wedding, a graduation party or a birth to celebrate, it will lift your spirits just to walk among the colorful pinatas. I swear to you!

And maybe you will realize you need to have a party just to get a pinata. Or you could just decorate your house with a huge, joyful, brightly colored piece of folk art.